2004 Food Quality Award

Roth later founded Freezing Machines Inc., and most of his work came from meat processing companies, which gave him educational access to process equipment and machinery of that day. In 1981, as the beef industry began to consolidate throughout the Midwest, Roth seized the opportunity to cash in on the large quantities of fresh trimmings.

At the 2004 Food Quality Award ceremonies, an event held last October and sponsored by DuPont Qualicon (Wilmington, Del.), Roth recalled the day in 1993 when the pathogen E. Coli 0157:H7 reared its ugly head and claimed some lives.

When that happened, Roth and his team, which includes his wife, Regina, who manages accounting and finance, became committed to finding ways to kill that bug and enhance the safety and quality of BPI’s product. It was then that Roth reminisced about the room where an ammonia leak had occurred at a slaughterhouse in California.

“It amazed me how cleanly the paint came off the wall and how clean that room smelled. Those were the things that just stuck in my head, and it really didn’t make sense to me at the time,” he says. “And it was a meat plant and the old days, so there was mold on the walls…but it was dead.”

So were bacteria on the beef that was inadvertently exposed to ammonia gas. “After the incident, in 1993, when the children died in the Northwest, we started looking for ways to kill that bug,” Roth says.

The BPI team learned relatively quickly that it could kill E. Coli O157:H7 and Salmonella, but they had a hard time getting rid of the taste and smell of the ammonium hydroxide that was used to kill bacteria.

“We worked on that for six years. The first time we did it, we didn’t know what we had done,” Roth says. “And quite frankly, several times, we gave up on it and thought we could never do it.” But they did; and the patented method became a federally deemed “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) process.

The process elevates the pH level of finished products, which disrupts the environment of pathogens and kills bacteria. In fact, an Iowa State University validation study of the process was published in Vol. 65, No. 5 of the Journal of Food Protection.

“The results of our published researched showed that the new pH enhancement process that BPI had developed had a significant impact on the populations of bacteria of public health significance,” writes Dr. James S. Dickson, a professor in the Iowa State’s Department of Animal Science.

The Process: A Short Course

BPI’s product starts out as federally approved beef trimmings from the fabrication lines of approved beef distributors that meet BPI raw material specifications. Raw materials are purchased only from suppliers who have validated critical control points in place for pathogen elimination or reduction.

Once inspected by BPI employees for consistency and quality, trimmings are transported through a process system that was mostly designed and built by BPI.

Trimmings first enter a material accumulator and are brought to near postmortem temperatures to facilitate the separation of lean from fat by centrifugal force. The technology allows BPI to tailor fat and moisture contents to customer specifications and the product typically finishes at a leanness of 95 percent.

From here, the lean trim is treated with the patented ammonium hydroxide pathogen reduction process to reduce E. Coli 0157:H7 and Salmonella. Ammonium hydroxide is also used to process soft caramel, baked goods, cheeses and chocolates, among other items.

“We’re an ingredient in probably 70 to 80 million pounds of ground beef each week, so the risk of E. Coli is one that we must act on in this war for food safety,” Roth says. “Food quality and food safety are core to the values that make BPI successful today and will be central to our growth. We believe it’s very good business and that it is profitable.”